


Blanket Statements

by nowseahare



Category: Tangled (2010), Tangled: The Series (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 19:25:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15780525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowseahare/pseuds/nowseahare
Summary: Five times Rapunzel and Eugene shared a bed throughout their relationship. Or at least that's the concept, it might turn out to be more than five times because my ship feelings cannot be tamed whoops.





	Blanket Statements

"I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams." WB Yeats

~

Their first night in Corona castle, Eugene couldn’t sleep. All his grand fantasies about piles of money and plush amenities hadn’t accounted for how he was so completely unused to something as basic as soft sheets. The mattress under him was _too_ nice, too giving under his weight. It didn’t feel like a bed at all. He tossed and turned trying to get comfortable but even the pajamas they’d fitted him in were too silky, too gentle, too… everything that his life wasn’t.

Finally, he just took a pillow and a blanket to the floor and tried to sprawl out there instead. It at least was more familiar. Alone in the dark, he quietly laughed at himself.

_How lordly you are, Flynn Rider_. But he guessed he wasn’t Flynn Rider anymore, huh?

The window in his sterile little guest room spilled a swath of square-paned moonlight over him, casting him in blue as he stared up at the ceiling. There were murals up there, painted between the beams. In the light of the afternoon he’d crowed about how posh that was, but now all he could see were the outlines of weird shadows in the dark overhead. It was almost menacing in its abstractness. The feeling of how much he didn’t belong here loomed oppressive, like a hand ready to snuff him out with one big fat thumb.

He jumped a little when a knock rapped on his door. He knew instantly who it was. Maybe on some level he’d been waiting for her.

He got up, the pants of his pajamas cloying ticklishly at his ankles, and opened the door for Rapunzel.

She gave him a nervous smile. She looked about as out of place as he did, swamped in a filmy dressing gown with some truly ridiculous sleeves. Who needed to sleep with ribbons halfway up their armpits, anyway?

All he could do was laugh again. He opened his arms, and she finally stopped looking like a child waiting to be chastised and instead walked right into his chest, as if she owned it entirely. She smushed her cheek against his shoulder, and he closed his arms around her, holding tight.

“A little more quiet than the woods,” he said. “You know, when I was planning on getting a castle of my own I hadn’t accounted for all the empty space. Your parents ought to fill that up with something.”

“My parents,” she said vaguely, like the words weren’t quite in the right language. “Yeah.”

Something squirmed up the back of Eugene’s neck and he gave a squawk.

The lizard climbed on top of his head.

“Sorry, he was getting squished,” Rapunzel said. The way her chest shook against him as she dissolved into a fit of giggles was nice.

She deserved this. A happy ending.

The family reunion had been a lot of emotions piled on top of even more emotions. Tears followed by the deep belly tired that only comes after crying yourself empty. It must have been so much for Rapunzel. But the way the king and queen looked at her like she was the sun itself fallen to their balcony made Eugene know that everything was going to be ok.

Obviously he didn’t quite fit into that equation, though. It was hard not to notice the stiff wariness of the king’s gaze whenever it fell on him, or the queen’s smooth politeness. Eugene got it. He wasn’t their family, and he was a pretty shady character to boot. It made perfect sense.

Where they all went from here… well, everybody had been too tired to discuss that part yet. It was already dark by the time the crying stopped.

The important thing was there would be a permanent room at the ready for Rapunzel. A home.

“Can I stay with you awhile?” she asked, encroaching on shy again.

“If you can handle the prestige of my scenic floor, then yes,” he said. “I’m uh. Camping.”

He pulled the blanket back for her, and they both slipped under it on the hard floor. Pascal curled up in the middle of the pillow, leaving the humans to awkwardly share the remaining corners. Their heads wound up half on the floor anyway, like how you both get wet when you share a too-small umbrella.

For a long moment, Eugene and Rapunzel simply watched each other. Her shorter hair was a somewhat uneven shape in the dark. He knew already she’d sleep here, if either of them wound up sleeping at all. It had been a long few days. It felt like an entire lifetime.

“You wanna know something crazy?” he said suddenly. Now that it was pillow talk his voice automatically made it a sort of stage whisper.

“What?”

“You’re beautiful.”

Her teeth flashed again, a sheepish grin. “You can barely see me, Eugene. It’s dark.”

“Doesn’t matter. I think you might be the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Top 3% for sure.”

He was saying it all like a joke, to protect himself from how he was also entirely serious. He had no idea why he was saying it now. It came out too fast and desperate, like he wouldn’t be able to say it tomorrow.

“I guess I might pass as a princess after all,” she said, stringing it out on a not-quite laugh of her own because her joke was just as serious as his.

Eugene finally asked the burning question.

“How do you like your parents?”

She must have expected it. Something in her pause was resigned. “They’re such kind people,” she said, holding on to her smile with that certain courage she always had.

“Yeah,” he said. “They are.”

“I can tell they’ve missed me so much... It makes me feel a little guilty that I don’t remember them.”

“Nobody can blame you for having baby brains when you were a baby.”

“It’s not so much blame. It’s just sad.”

He made a low sound of agreement, picking at the pillow with his fingers.

For happily ever after, it sure was… complicated.

“Rapunzel,” he said, “I can tell you with confidence--princesshood aside, just between you and me--that whatever happens, your best choice is gonna be the one you make for yourself. That’s what got you out of that tower, right? I think I like your parents because I can tell that’s what they want most for you too. For you to be happy. You know? That’s important. I’m just saying I hope you’ll remember that’s important.”

She _wasn’t_ expecting that. He could tell by how her eyes drifted to Pascal, who was already snoozing at their foreheads. She had to take a minute, and the longer that minute drew out, the more Eugene came to realize she probably wasn’t going to respond to it. She wasn’t ready yet. She still wasn’t used to being such a priority to someone.

“What about Flynnigan Rider?” she asked instead, with sudden gusto. Maybe that courage of hers was actually just the same bravado he always used. “Did _he_ like his parents?”

“Flynnigan Rider didn’t have parents,” Eugene said primly. “Not because he was an orphan, but because he was a fictional hero and fictional heroes don’t need parents.”  
  
“That’s silly,” she said. “Everybody needs parents.”  
  
“Do they?”  
  
She watched him, her big eyes somewhat reflective in the moonlight.  
  
“How do you do it?” she asked.  
  
“Do what?”  
  
She worried her lip a little. “I don’t know how to say it.”  
  
“You might as well just say it as it comes, then. Lord knows that’s what I do.”  
  
“How do you just… be… without your parents?”  
  
He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the twinge in his chest at that.  
  
“You and I are pretty different creatures, sunshine,” he said slowly. “I never knew my mother. What you’ve gone through is, ah. Well... It was terrible.”  
  
She seemed surprised again by that word terrible. Like it hadn’t fully occurred to her that she was the victim of something.  
  
He hated that. How she hadn’t known anything else.  
  
“She loved me,” Rapunzel said, not like an excuse but like a strange fact.  
  
“Love doesn’t look like that,” Eugene said. He knew absolutely nothing about love, but even he knew that.  
  
“No,” she said firmly. “She did love me. It just… wasn’t a good love.”  
  
Well. She’d know better than him.  
  
They tried to sleep for awhile, or perhaps just fell into silence again. He shifted his leg and accidentally knocked into hers with his shin. When he pulled back, he saw her duck her head a little, her nose brushing the blanket.  
  
Maybe it was the deep conversation, but all the sudden he noticed how intimate this situation was. He hadn’t even thought about it before. Hugging, sleeping side by side--it seemed fairly normal for them at this point.  
  
But they hadn’t kissed each other since that tower. What was the protocol on that?  
  
Those shadowy paintings up on the ceiling seemed to shift and laugh at him. A phoney Flynn Rider wasn’t cut out for silly love stories with princesses. It was just as incongruous as his body tossing and turning in that plush bed. Good things that happened in his life were things to wring out for all the fun they were worth before they left again, because they always did leave just as sure as his wallet always ran dry. He wouldn’t do that to Rapunzel--he knew she was good enough that he would never regret meeting her. But that didn’t make it any less painful that surely their time was limited here.  
  
… To hell with it. He should kiss her one more time, before he lost his chance.  
  
She was watching him again, and his mind could fill in where her freckles were, hidden in the dark across her nose.  
  
Something pricked at the back of his eyes and he cleared his throat. All at once he couldn’t do it. It hurt too badly. “Goodnight, Rapunzel,” he said instead. He turned around, pulling the blanket up his shoulder even though he wasn’t cold.

_Aw Flynn, you old coward._  
  
She shifted behind him, earning a sleepy squeak from Pascal on the pillow. Then she caught Eugene completely off-guard by sliding her arm around him, tucking in close to his side. He could feel her forehead press against his back, even the sigh of her breath in his shirt. She pulled up her knees and let them rest just barely brushing the backs of his thighs.  
  
He swallowed the hurt, which had invited quite a few other emotions into his esophagus, and folded his hand around hers over his chest. Her fingers skimmed the skin peering between his shirt buttons.  
  
“You have hair on your chest,” she said into his back.  
  
“Guilty.”  
  
“For some reason it’s funny I hadn’t known.”  
  
There was so much they’d never know about each other.  
  
“Goodnight, Rapunzel,” he repeated, softer this time, hoping it would say at least half of all the things he couldn’t.  
  
“Goodnight, Eugene.”  
  
He ran his thumb over her knuckles, messing up his own heart by not raising her hand just that tiny bit to kiss her fingers.


End file.
